Eco-Friendly and Natural Cleaning Agents for Everyday Use

Keeping your home fresh and clean is anything but easy, and everyone who’s done it will tell you that it takes an entire arsenal of tools and cleaning chemicals at your disposal.

Usually, these cleaning agents are fully synthetic and can cause permanent damage to your body if not used correctly, and even when they are, some of them are so potent that cleaning your bathroom will leave you coughing and wheezing for days on end.

But what if there was a better solution?

As surprising as it may seem, mother nature already gave us everything we need to clean stains from our clothes and keep all the surfaces in our home looking fresh and impeccable.

Keep reading to learn more about how you can utilize some ordinary items from your cupboard to do your cleaning and not have to resort to expensive and potentially toxic commercial chemicals.

White vinegar

When you take a whiff of vinegar, you’d never assume the fairly smelly substance could ever be used to make something clean, and it’s usually overlooked even as an ingredient in home cooking.

However, years of extended use have shown vinegar to be an excellent natural disinfectant, and its acidity makes it one of the best things to use on gummy buildup and water stains you may have in your kitchen.

In fact, it’s so effective that it can even remove coffee stains from your pot, something that most commercial cleaning agents struggle with.

There are certain alternatives if you’re hesitant to use vinegar, such as lemon juice, but due to the fact that vinegar can practically last forever whereas lemon juice goes bad in only a few days, it’s not exactly cost-effective.

If you find that the smell is too strong for you, water it down a bit, and while it may reduce the efficiency of the substance, it’ll be good enough for removing most stains.

Borax

Similar to baking soda, borax is one of the strongest natural bleaches out there, and any elderly person can attest to the miraculous effects it has on stains found on clothes or any hard surface.

That being said, it’s impossible to overstate how dangerous it can be if not handled properly, as it can easily irritate skin, eyes, and even your airways, despite being completely natural.

Because of this, you should make sure that the borax in your home is stored far out of your kids’ reach and somewhere where it won’t be near any food or drinks.

You can find it in the laundry section of most stores near you, and as long as you’re cautious with how you use it, no stain will stand a chance.

Cleaning your microwave

The amount of abuse an average microwave goes through in its lifetime is astounding, and it’s not uncommon to find crusted food splatters and bad odors in there.

While most store-bought cleaning agents will definitely clean it, you have to consider the dangerous chemicals found in them, and if you account for the fact that you’re putting them in a box that’s used to heat all your food, they suddenly become less appealing.

In order to get that bad odor out, you can mix 6 tbsps of baking soda with half a cup of lemon juice and a cup of water, giving you a pleasant-smelling mixture that will also loosen up all the grime that may have built up in there over time.

Microwave this solution for a few minutes, allowing it to boil, and then dump it out in your toilet, this way you’ll be getting a 2-for-1, as the mixture will also leave that same pleasant smell behind in your bathroom.

Things to look out for

As effective as vinegar, baking soda, borax, and other ingredients may be at cleaning your home, some of them should never be put together due to the violent chemical reactions they may cause.

A good example is vinegar and hydrogen peroxide, which will create peracetic acid when combined, causing great damage to your skin, eyes, and airways if you’re nearby.

Another thing to avoid is using ammonia and bleach on the same surface, as it creates highly toxic fumes that can cause permanent damage and even death with prolonged exposure.

Always wear safety equipment when cleaning your home, even when it’s with something as unassuming as baking soda, as you never know what could happen if your homebrew cleaning agent reacts in an unexpected manner.

Bottom line

Household chores usually call for a lot of cleaning, and eco-friendly household members will do anything to reduce the amount of pollution they contribute to.

Explore the aforementioned cleaning agents and look for other ways to clean your home without having to resort to commercial solutions.

A do-it-yourself approach to things like this can be potentially dangerous if you don’t know what you’re doing, but if you’ve got all the necessary protection, there’s no harm in trying something new.